Gareth Edwards: The innovative director who shook up Hollywood’s visual effects

Hollywood director Gareth Edwards has always done things differently. Now his latest film is about all the tech heads in Tinseltown.

Best known for blockbuster films like Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) and Godzilla (2014), he’s now rumored to be directing the next Jurassic Park film, and his sci-fi thriller The Creator is also in contention for Best Special Effects. and Best Sound at the Academy Awards next month.

The film sees John David Washington play Joshua, a former Special Forces agent, as a futuristic war rages between humans and artificial intelligence. The film stars Gemma Chan and Allison Janney.

Speaking to the BBC’s Spencer Kelly, Edwards said: “I used to jokingly point out the style of the film (for example) if Terrence Malick had slept with James Cameron and had a baby… that was the ultimate high bar for what this film was.” “. He was trying to!”

Its impressive visuals – see the massive military spaceship called The Nomad – received widespread praise, especially since the film had a budget of around $80m (£63m), a third of what a special effects-heavy film like this usually costs. .

Working with pioneering studio Industrial Light and Magic (ILM), founded in 1975 to create the visual effects for Star Wars, British-born Edwards drew inspiration from his first film, Monsters (2010), an indie film made on a shoestring budget. With a small team.

Most big films meticulously plan and build elaborate sets before shooting the majority of their special effects on blue/green screen, which is very expensive.

But Edwards changed things up, shooting on location in countries like Cambodia and Thailand, and later adding special effects.

Referring to Monsters, which had a crew of just six and was also shot on location, Edwards says: “(I was) trying to get back to the positives of doing a guerrilla film.

“It’s a much more efficient, exciting and interesting process. If you go to a location that looks like the place in the scene and… if the crew is small enough, it’s cheaper to fly anywhere in the world than to build an airplane.” hiring.

“Whatever was the best place in the world we could find for that scene, we would go and shoot it there, knowing that in the computer afterwards, we could change things.

“(It) looked really good before it was handed over to the visual effects company.”

Edwards explains that working this way has become easier thanks to recent advances in technology.

“We tried to keep everything small, and what allowed for that, which wouldn’t have happened five years ago, is that camera technology has gotten really good.”

The Sony FX3 was the tool of choice: “It’s very cheap and small, and I can move around with the camera. It was a tremendous, liberating thing.”

Careful selection of locations also helped keep the budget low.

“It looks bigger than your average movie because each location is an Instagram destination,” Edwards tells Kelly.

Much of The Creator was filmed in Thailand because “money goes much further there.”

But creating a film this way requires a great deal of trust on the part of the visual effects company, which comes at the end of the project.

Edwards explains that he showed the early stages of the scenes to ILM so that any misunderstandings could be quickly resolved.

Filming on location was also an advantage for the actors.

Londoner Andrew Roberts was the special effects supervisor for the film.

“It’s great to have something real for the visual effects artists to build on, and also for the actors to be in a space where there’s something real that can inform their emotions and their performance, rather than them being surrounded by blue or green (screen) and being told to imagine.”

The film received much praise for its special effects, although some critics were not entirely impressed with the storytelling itself.

Wendy Eade of The Guardian gave it four stars, writing: “British director Gareth Edwards has finally managed to make the stunning sci-fi film he was always destined to make.

“With this ambitious, idea-driven, expectation-subverting confrontation between man and machine, he co-wrote and directed one of the best original sci-fi films in recent years.”

For Edwards, the film presented a different challenge to the likes of Rogue One, his last film released eight years ago.

Reports claimed that Lucasfilm left Edwards out in the cold near the end of the project, bringing in Tony Gilroy to write new dialogue and film additional scenes.

“Having done these huge franchises, there are pros and cons,” Edwards tells BBC Click.

“The negatives are that you have this giant fan base and all this pressure and you can’t fail; it had better be a massive hit because there are a lot of people waiting to see it.

“When you make an original sci-fi[film]you have the opposite problem – no one has heard of it, no one cares, you have to educate the world about what it’s about… Why should they do it? Go see it.

“It’s a double-edged sword. (You’re) trying to do something new but if it’s so out there…I’ve made this stuff up in my head and everyone is helping me make it but what if I’m wrong and it doesn’t work?”

Perhaps surprisingly, given his lineage, Edwards, who hails from Nuneaton, is his own worst critic.

“I always think I don’t push things enough, I always think I’m committed and sold out… I always look at my heroes and beat myself up. My heroes growing up were Spielberg, Lucas, James Cameron.

“We can go much further and do something even more special…” he continues.

“(But) the day you finish a movie, and everything in it was easy and fun and fun, is the day you made your worst movie, and you should probably retire.”

And the Oscar chances for the creator?

He humbly points out that he was not personally nominated because the honor is reserved for the visual effects team (Roberts, Jay Cooper, Ian Comley and Neil Corbould) and the sound crew.

“As a proud parent of the film, this is a great end to the journey,” he admits.

Roberts adds: “I was born and raised in the UK, my parents are from the Caribbean, a working-class family, and… to be at this stage of being nominated for an Oscar and possibly winning… I could never have dreamed of this.”